MICHEL VAN DER BURG

Tag Archives: Steinbach

Settela peeks outside the death train to Auschwitz.
Last glance at the outside world for the 9-year-old Dutch Sinti girl Settela Steinbach just before these cattle car doors close , and this death train heads for Auschwitz on May 19 , 1944.
Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach peeks outside , at the last moment just before the sliding door is closed , standing inside a freight wagon with 74 people on May 19 , 1944 in the Westerbork concentration camp in Holland (75 people the moment the train leaves), when this deportation train leaves for Auschwitz-Birkenau – where Settela is murdered a few months later in one of the gas chambers.
Here she wears a headscarf made from a torn sheet, because the Nazis had her head shaved , and while Settela peeks outside , her mother cries behind her in the car : “Get out of there, or soon your head gets in between!”
She was filmed by the Jewish prisoner filmmaker Rudolf Breslauer as part of a documentary film being made on the Westerbork camp.
In 2017 I made two other short films of this moment (20170721 and 20170725 michelvanderburg.com).
Today 75 years later, on the occasion of the opening of the site Settela.com this new 1 minute slow-motion film (4:3 format) using the original Westerbork 1944 film rushes of Rudolf Breslauer from the archive of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Open Images). 20190519 ~ Settela ~ Settela.com

① memo 20170721 ~ Settela ~ The 9-year-old dutch Sinti-girl Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach peeks outside , at the last moment just before the sliding door is closed , standing inside a freight wagon with 74 people on May 19 , 1944 in the Westerbork concentration camp in Holland , when this deportation train leaves for Auschwitz-Birkenau – where Settela is murdered a few months later in one of the gas chambers. Here she wears a headscarf made from a torn sheet, because the Nazis had her head shaved , and while Settela peeks outside , her mother cries behind her in the car : “Get out of there, or soon your head gets in between!”
She was filmed by the jewish prisoner filmmaker Rudolf Breslauer as part of a documentary film being made on the Westerbork camp. More info here http://romasinti.eu/#story/settela-steinbach
In this short film I start with a slow-motion (10x) of the 3 seconds clip, followed by the unedited clip from the Westerbork 1944 film rushes / Rudolf Breslauer / Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Open Images)